Is it ever okay to settle on a food resource?

[Bearnaise]

In my current game, I am about to found my second city, and while I've decided on the general location, I'm torn between these three specific tiles:

A city at any one of those locations could easily become a production powerhouse, but they each have some trade-offs.

Site A:
Honestly, there's not really much wrong with site A for the short term. It actually has the most production potential--(-9F/+23P if I were to mine all the hills nearby, which would be supported by the +9F between the south fish, the corn, and the +2F from the city tile)--but it does "waste" the northern fish, which is arguably the most valuable food tile in the game. Another problem with it is that it's the southernmost option, and crowds out some potential development along the river. But the biggest issue with A is that it can't work every tile in its BFC with just the fish and the corn, and I would have to waste valuable riverside and grassland tiles of future cities chaining irrigation up to it to create mediocre farmland to support its two plains tiles.

Site B:
Site B was actually where I'd originally envisioned this city before I had more of the fog cleared. Tile-wise it has almost the same makeup as A, except that it trades one of its grassland hills for a coast tile. The only problem with B is that it shares 2 tiles with the capital, both of which I would prefer stayed with Athens. However this also resolves the issue that A had with farmland. Because it has two fewer -1F tiles (1 plains and one grassland hill), site B can support all of its tiles without any chained farms at a cost of 4P. But it also leaves the south fish open for another city to use and doesn't crowd the river.

Site C:
So here's where the title of the post becomes relevant--I'm currently leaning towards founding on this site. Once again it has a very similar tile makeup as B (duh, we're only shifting 1 tile away between any two sites). Basically, it trades the tiles that B shares with the capital for ocean. Not fantastic, I know, but it's still 2 free commerce that I wouldn't be getting from B. It also trades the corn for one of the fish, so I would get +3F from the city tile instead of +2F, and a +1F upgrade from non-irrigated corn to fish. This means that C can reach 21 pop without irrigation, biology, or any farms at all, and I would therefore always be guaranteed to be able to support at least one specialist. (An engineer, maybe?) Since I'm also playing as Greece, (specifically Pericles, but both Alexander and Pericles are Philo leaders) free GPP from a production city is nothing to sneer at, and I wouldn't say no to the occasional guaranteed GE. But then again, I'm also settling on corn--everyone's favorite land-bound food resource. I feel like wanting to settle there is like blasphemy. Could this be that one exceptional circumstance where it's okay to waste food like that?

So in the end, I'm quite torn between the 3 sites I laid out. I'm hoping some other more experienced players (prince level here ) could provide some input as to what they think is best. Who knows, maybe there's even a tile I haven't considered that would be even better than these three options. Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope to get some feedback.

 

[Rusten]

Is it ever okay to settle on a food resource?

Very rare and this is not one of those times.

So in the end, I'm quite torn between the 3 sites I laid out. I'm hoping some other more experienced players (prince level here ) could provide some input as to what they think is best. Who knows, maybe there's even a tile I haven't considered that would be even better than these three options. Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope to get some feedback.

If you're Pericles (creative):
Settle SW of clams to be able to share gold tile with capital (which is lower on food) until bureaucracy.

If Alex (not creative):
Settle 1N of B to get both fish and corn in 1st ring (no need for early monument).

 

[yyeah]

There is something that you didnt consider.
You can make 3 strong cities out of it.

1st. 1N of B - not bad 1st exp, you dont need road to be connected and Capitol can bulid WB for this city. Or you can allways settle it later if you want to landlock some more sites.

Or for examle 1NE from B taht spot wouldnt be bad if you want to put some cottages on non riverside tiles witch in somecases is not bad decision if you dont have better spot for Oxford. Edit And yea like Rusten said you can shere gold allso.

2nd. 2S of B - allso good spot with a lot of hills and nice potencial. Preety good HE site i would say.

3th. 2W1S from A - another decent city preety good for Moai.

Dont be afreaid of overlap, thats allways good decision. On higher dificulty allmoust allways theres no other option then overlap to settle this minimum witch is 6 cities on S/N.

About your question.
yes sometimes its ok to settle on Corn f you have enough food around, but personally i would do it only if it is my Capitol.
In this case i would settle this Corn if i allrdy have at lest 5 more decent cities.

 

[Gwynnja]

^ agree with both of them. Settling on bananas or sugar is often good. I'd be hard pressed to think of a situation where settling on corn would be optimal.

 

[iggymnrr]

.....

 

[Seraiel]

Settling on a source of food is perfectly ok, if it's the best option! If you settle on that corn, You get 1 city with 2 Fishes and +1 from the centre square, but if you settle B and then 1SW of A, you get 1 city with instant Corn giving 2 more then if settling on it, and dry Corn + Fishes are really enough for most situations, and getting 2 cities is better than 1 . If you however have more land that you can settle, then settling on the Corn might be right choice, because then, you get a city with 2 Fishes and a +1 centre square, and that'd make a very good GP-Farm. 2nd city and GP-Farm is also optimal.

So make it dependent on the map. You have started near the Jungle, Jungle sucks, if you can get more cities that don't have to fight the Jungle, good. If you're isolated however and play on a low difficulty, so when nobody except you might settle the land, then getting 1 slightly better city early outweighs getting 1 additional city very late.

 

[lymond]

Rusten is right on here. Look to make the most of your land, and don't be afraid at all to overlap cities. Many advantages to doing so, especially early when cities remain fairly small. Resource sharing and distance maintenance costs are a couple of examples.

"food resources" you might consider settling on are banana, rice (dry), and sugar. Maybe even cows. But all this depends on the land and setup of a city. Settling on a 3F tile does provide a bonus to the city center to speed your first worker and give a little extra early growth.

Pigs on the other hand, especially grass pigs, is one of the best food resources, so I would avoid settling on those - unless, as iggymnrr mentioned, you have a patch of pigs, but that is rare except maybe on rainforest.

 

[MegaLurker]

You definitely don't want to settle on that corn. All that food makes for 2 or even 3 strong city spots, all fairly close to your capital for lower maintenance, and all coastal (hint: gold in the capital and all those forests would make for an easy Great Lighthouse, and you desperately need a lighthouse in Athens anyway). That corn is also easily irrigated after civil service.

The common scenarios for scenarios for settling on food are bananas or sugar (because you can't improve them for a while, and the faster opening makes a big difference) or dry rice. Even then you would normally only settle your capital on those resources, knowing there is at least 1 other strong food tile to be worked. Unless you have a ridiculously food-rich area in your territory you want to get as many cities in as you can ie. 1 food special = 1 city, or even sharing a strong food resource if you are boxed in.

 

[Bearnaise]

Wow, thanks for some great advice all around.

Dont be afreaid of overlap, thats allways good decision. On higher dificulty allmoust allways theres no other option then overlap to settle this minimum witch is 6 cities on S/N.

Look to make the most of your land, and don't be afraid at all to overlap cities.

Boy you guys keyed in on something big time. Yes, I've always been very averse to overlapping cities too much. In the past I've tried to keep it at 2-3 tiles max. I'll definitely be changing my tune on that one. I always got the impression that it was generally detrimental, but from some of the examples I've been given here, I see that that's not really the case.

I feel I should add a bit of detail that I didn't share in the OP. To the east of the capital is all flatlands/coastline with tons more food. 1N2E of the cows is another clams, plus corn, pigs, and fish dotted eastward along the coast.That's why I'm not really worried about using this hills area as an economic center or even using this food for GPP.

If you notice my neighbor SE you might be able to see why I want production up quick...

So with regards to the advice I've been given, I think I'm going to settle this second city 1SW of the clams like Rusten suggested. This is really the only production-heavy area that I have access to, and that site is all production. Plus it's close to the capital, and, like Rusten said, it can share the gold with the capital if need be to keep my economy straight. I think a future city site 1SW of A like Seraiel suggested would work well with this--between those 2 cities I'd work every bit of land along the coast, and thus work every hill in the area.

you desperately need a lighthouse in Athens anyway

My next tech was going to be sailing if I found any copper to the east. I didn't, so it's probably gonna be iron working first. Man cannot live on chariots alone, though I may have some really early conquest if that ends up being the case... Also, I don't know yet if Hatty or Izzy have copper since I literally just finished Writing.

P.S. As a long-time lurker but first-time poster this was a really great experience. So thanks for the help everyone. I really learned a lot from this.

 

[Rusten]

P.S. As a long-time lurker but first-time poster this was a really great experience. So thanks for the help everyone. I really learned a lot from this.

When you put that much effort into the OP and not just a screenshot with a one-liner question you're bound to get good advice.

 

[lymond]

IW is generally a bad thing to tech. Chariots are fine, but you want some warriors spawnbusting barbs out in the wilds. You do not need a warrior in your capital early while building and whipping settlers. He should not be there.

A unit can spawnbust a 5X5 tile area. No barbs will spawn in the area, so if you place these units strategically you can prevent or eliminate barbs.

I would move the warrior you have in cap to 2S of A in for now. Your scout can move to pop the hut and then station him 1S of that corn over there for now. As you settle cities you can adjust the spawnbusters.

From what I see, with 2 AIs to the South of you, your biggest barb problem may come from the EAst, although I don't know how much land goes down to the SW.

Also, I don't know what difficulty level this is.

As for tech, GLH could be good here. So Sailing, Masonry then Alpha..or if this is a lower level, just straight to Alpha and trade for smaller techs.

Mines and production are good, ofc, but is also important to keep in mind that food is production too.

Clams pigs is a good city and should probably be your next one after fish/clams.

 

[dutchfire]

Are you using the BUG mod? If so, you can press Alt+X to dotmap your map very easily.

I also like 3E1N (or 4E1N, scout that last coast tile!), especially if you're going for the Great Lighthouse.

 

[Bearnaise]

IW is generally a bad thing to tech. Chariots are fine, but you want some warriors spawnbusting barbs out in the wilds. You do not need a warrior in your capital early while building and whipping settlers. He should not be there.

A unit can spawnbust a 5X5 tile area. No barbs will spawn in the area, so if you place these units strategically you can prevent or eliminate barbs.

I would move the warrior you have in cap to 2S of A in for now. Your scout can move to pop the hut and then station him 1S of that corn over there for now. As you settle cities you can adjust the spawnbusters.

From what I see, with 2 AIs to the South of you, your biggest barb problem may come from the EAst, although I don't know how much land goes down to the SW.

Also, I don't know what difficulty level this is.

As for tech, GLH could be good here. So Sailing, Masonry then Alpha..or if this is a lower level, just straight to Alpha and trade for smaller techs.

Mines and production are good, ofc, but is also important to keep in mind that food is production too.

Clams pigs is a good city and should probably be your next one after fish/clams.

The difficulty is prince, so still somewhat low difficulty.

I know IW is usually not great, but I've already researched BW and all the copper I can see is in the southern desert band. And after checking over the map again i realize I missed that Isabella already has a copper source she can't use yet (no BW). I've seen her be pretty aggressive in early game so I'm kind of nervous about those prospects. Should I still wait for Alphabet (and one of them to research BW->IW) and tech trade for IW?

That warrior was only there to escort the incoming settler, btw. I'm going to send him out immediately once I start playing again. Remember I didn't know where I was going to settle yet, and he got finished only about 4 turns ago. (I gave the settler a chop from the hill the workers are on, so that's why he's almost done already.)

And I am aware of the importance of food, but it would be nice for that city to stay useful militarily while it's recovering from .

 

[Bearnaise]

Are you using the BUG mod? If so, you can press Alt+X to dotmap your map very easily.

I also like 3E1N (or 4E1N, scout that last coast tile!), especially if you're going for the Great Lighthouse.

Not since my last hard drive crashed. I really miss that feature though!

And I know it's driving me insane too! I'll probably send my warrior over there before I start him fogbusting.

 

[6K Man]

Re: settling on food tiles. Settling on dry Rice makes sense because you’re only forgoing 1F by doing so and presumably getting access to some good tiles in the process. Same logic applies to settling on Sugar (4F when improved, 3F when settled) with a couple of other incentives – if you don’t have Calendar, you get the food bonus on the city tile long before the tile can be improved, and Sugar also tends to come in groups, so extra food may be of lesser concern than getting all the best tiles into the BFC. Bananas can also be settled if Calendar is far off.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say you should never settle on Corn or Pigs (think of a 1-tile island with Pigs and 3 Fish that is 3 tiles from any land, to use an extreme example). If settling anywhere else would kill a good tile, or there’s extra food that can’t easily be shared, or you need to steal a city site from an AI or block an AI that is about to settle, it could make sense to settle on a 5F or 6F tile. But it’s definitely not ideal.

In your game I’d suggest site B, which would be a great production city even without irrigating the Corn – you could work all the hills (4 grass and 2 plains) with food to spare. A, as noted, kills the northern Fish, and it also means you can’t put a city on the west coast that could work the west Fish and 6 riverside grass tiles. C wastes food (the western Fish can’t easily be shared without slowing C’s growth), you need a border pop to work either Fish, and it doesn’t have any more hills than B does (so is no better for production purposes).

Re: B – why do you care that it shares 2 tiles with the capital? It’s never going to be working those tiles (plains forest and grass forest) anyway, and I can’t see why Athens would work them either, until much, much later. If (or more likely, When!) you chop those stiles, settling on B also allows you to direct the hammers to either of Athens or B.

I don’t think 1N of B makes sense – it gets you some useless ocean at the cost of a grass hill, and I don’t think the Clams are really shareable; your capital is food-poor without them. 1NE of B makes sense if (as Rusten suggests) you are Creative and don’t think Athens can work the Gold consistently.

 

[Bjarkov]

1) Settling food ressources is fine. Especially settling ressources that wont be improved/worked for a long time is good. The extra food per turn helps you ramp up the economy faster, leading to higher value than the worked food ressource would eventually be. (1 food by turn 5 is more important than 4 food by turn 100)

2) your proposed city placements are a little off. City overlap is not as detrimental as you might think. Until you reach industrial and modern age, overlaps are an advantage because a) it ensures that valuable tiles are always worked, and b) cities can help each other mature cottages.

I'd probably settle N of B; good production site, good food. sharing the clam is not bad as there will be times when city2 wants to grow and Athens is at the happycap. However, NE of B is also a valid option for sharing the gold. Working that gold 100% of the time is important, especially in the initial phase. If Athens looked more like a cottage capital, I'd be inclined to go full helper and share as much terrain as I could

 

[Macksideshow]

I'd go 1N of B to get corn and fish in first ring and reduce maint. Then 3E1N of cap. Then 1S1W of A. Then I'd chop and whip chariots and go eat Hatty.

Yeah it is ok to settle food resource but obviously it would need justification. Capital on dry rice, sugar, banana (as others have mentioned) can make for a fast initial worker and early capital growth which will snowball significantly.